On October 7, 2018, Brazil held its presidential elections in which 13 candidates fought to win 50 +1 percent of the total votes; however, not one candidate won the majority of the votes. As a result, a run-off election was held on October 28th, where a new president, Jair Bolsonaro, was elected. This far-right candidate won the election with 55 percent of the votes against his opponent Fernando Haddad, a leftist candidate from the previous incumbent party. Bolsonaro has been a very controversial candidate throughout his campaign for his inflammatory comments made towards women and LGBT community. According to BBC News, Bolsonaro’s pro-gun stance, his threat to open the Amazon rainforest to mining, and his overall populist ways have led some people to refer to him as the “Trump of the Tropics.”
Since 2002, Brazil was headed by the leftist Workers’ Party which was founded by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula). But now that Brazil has newly elected a far-right president, what triggered the drastic change in leadership? Felipe Montero, professor and academic director at INSEAD business school, believes that this vote wasn’t necessarily for Bolsonaro but against the corrupt party that was previously in charge. This corruption was headed by former President Lula, who was disqualified from the presidential race because he is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence for money laundering and other corruption charges. Even though he is behind bars, Lula handpicked Haddad to be the candidate for the Workers’ Party so that he could govern by proxy and eventually receive a presidential pardon from prison, according to Al Jazeera News. The people of Brazil, however, have spoken and marginally decided that they prefer a far-right candidate to a corrupt party.
Now with the election finished, we must focus on how Bolsonaro will lead the country especially with a Congress that has 30 different parties represented. According to The Washington Post, there are three possible outcomes for Bolsonaro: disaster, success and partial reform. Since Bolsonaro’s party, the Social Liberal Party only holds 10 percent of the seats in Congress, it will be difficult to pass legislation. But there is also a chance for success since some of the parties have not outrightly opposed supporting his policies, so there is a chance to create some unity towards initiatives to reduce unemployment and fixing the economy. Despite that, the most likely outcome is that there is partial reform because Bolsonaro can end up being less combative than his campaign paints him to be. This could lead to him losing some anti-Workers’ Party support but keeping his most loyal supporters ending up in a polarizing position that is not very effective. Now it’s just a waiting game until January 1, when Bolsonaro takes office and begins to run the largest country in South America.
-Regina Rivera
